The Siren
by kitties1ffn
Summary: Edward Cullen is an art conservator obsessed by a painting- of a mermaid!


**Life has been a tad different for me over the last few months. I have made two new and amazingly wonderful friends. Laura and Joyce. Without their support, I wouldn't still be writing. Joyce encourages me constantly and Laura not only tells me nice things, but God love her, she edits, beta's and listens to my near hysteria without a cross word or whimper. Thank you my lovelies.**

**This is a totally different story for me to write as well and I think is a metaphor for my life changes. Yes, I'm learning, and I have mixed the characters and their descriptions up a bit. I hope you enjoy it.**

**I dedicate this story to Amanda Spooneybarger, Katy Dazzledbythe Cullen and Lisa Heartofdarkess for their support, friendship and encouragement and unstinting belief. **

**Thank you girls.**

**Forgive any errors in this story, I couldn't find anyone to beta it for me, so this is all me, in the raw, naked and alone, as it were so please BE NICE. If you find any mistakes, pm me!**

**THE SIREN**

**A TALE OF LOVE AND DESTINY**

**The Siren**

**He listened in thrall to the song of the siren,  
Her voice like a star as it flew through the air.  
He drowned in her eyes as she called him to follow,  
And likened the sun to the gold of her hair.**

**She swept up her arms and held him close to her,  
Her soft lips caressing the lines on his brow.  
He could not resist her, a magic had trapped him,  
And nothing could save him, for she had him now.**

**She pulled him down with her into the clear water,  
He gasped as death started the grip on his soul.  
His life ebbed away as she dragged him still further,  
And laughed when she saw she'd accomplished her goal.  
**

**Charlotte Lester**

…**..**

Despite having studied Fine Art at the Royal Academy of Art in London, I always knew I didn't actually want to paint for a living. As a hobby, of course, drawing, sketching and painting was something I adored and indulged in at every given opportunity, but not as a way of earning a livelihood. Practical to the point of boring, I've always known my limitations. Although I knew I was talented painter, I was also realistic and knew that I didn't have the 'edge' or the fervour to be a successful artist.

From early childhood, I would carry a note pad, pencil or piece of charcoal with me wherever I went and would sketch everything from the waving grass in the local park to the goldfish in our garden pond.

Every free moment was spent in various art galleries and museums that had once been the sanctuary of my favourite painters. My obsession with the new romantics led me to a bit of an oddity in my family to the point that whenever my name was mentioned, people would look at me with a sigh of pity.

My parents were both lecturers in dry, dusty subjects, and just didn't understand where my artistic streak came from. They tried to discourage me saying that I needed to train so that I could get a _'proper job'_ for when I left school, but as my skill improved, they had to admit I was good and from then on, helped me achieve what I wanted. And that was to go to art school. As I grew up, I continued to paint and draw at any given opportunity, but I didn't want to do it as anything other than a hobby. Despite wanting to study the subject at university, I knew I wanted something else as well, I didn't intend to be an impoverished, tortured artist, wallowing in paint and canvases whilst living on pot noodles and tap water. It was a pastime and pleasurable pursuit and something that allowed me to be even more insular and self-contained than usual, but it wasn't an all-encompassing passion.

No. My desires lie in quite a different, far more scientific and skilled direction altogether.

Watching my contemporaries producing utter crap out of toilet roll holders, toffee wrappers and used condoms, horrified me. My interests were firmly stuck in the new-romantic, pre-Raphaelite classical paintings of Millais, Waterhouse and Burne-Jones, and their mythical beauty. I even found Rossetti a little bit avant-garde for my liking and don't start me off about Monet.

My grandmother had insisted that my middle name was William after the amazing artist, John William Waterhouse, and the strangest thing of all is that we shared the same date of birth, 6 of April.

I enjoyed university and settled in quite easily and quickly. My personality meant that I was always in the background, nondescript and uninteresting. People were always surprised during exhibitions at the delicacy and precision of my works and I got many compliments, but no one remembered me, I was just "oh you know the one in the plaid shirts who paints lots of girls and flowers."

All that changed during my second term of study when we visited the conservation department of the National Gallery.

That was it.

In the blink of an eye watering, chemically induced epiphany, I found my calling and never looked back.

The second I saw the way that a dirty, nicotine and fire smoke encrusted painting was brought back to life using something as simple as lemon juice, a cocktail of chemicals and brushes and cloths, I was hooked. To make a painting become vibrant and seemingly perfect again, after being hidden away because of the lack of care and excesses of humanity, for centuries, took my breath away. To be able to repair old paint that had been adhered to a canvas using albumen or egg yolk was a miraculous thing to me. To swipe high grade white spirit over the corner of a blackened study just for celestial blue, blood red and gold to explode like a visual feast before my eyes, took my breath away.

This is what I wanted to do. This was my calling.

This thought danced and percolated in my brain for well over a year but I did nothing about it, other than a little research into what qualifications were needed. And I discussed it with no one else. During a visit to the conservatory department of the National Portrait Gallery when I was in my second year of studying, my interest reached an obsessional level and my future was decided.

After meeting, and befriending an art expert who was based in the States but was doing a specialist course at the Royal Academy, I began planning what I needed to do to be as good as the professionals I had witnessed at work. As soon as I graduated, I headed off to the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation in Washington DC and trained and worked there for five years.

Without giving my parents, or life in the UK, a second thought, I packed one small bag, grabbed my paintbrushes, easel and pad, passport and wallet, and headed across the Atlantic.

I had a raft of academic acquaintances at home, but no friends to speak of, other than my two cats that I left with my aunt.

I never saw them again.

Travelling to DC, despite feeling jet-lagged, I visited the lab before I even visited my lodgings; such was my passion and desire to become enmeshed in my new world.

My life in America wasn't as exciting as one might have expected, although it was extremely enjoyable as far as I was concerned. There were no wild nights out or debauched parties. No. that wasn't for me. Instead, I spent every day working industriously in the controlled temperature and carefully lit lab, or huddled over a book or computer doing research into techniques and materials. I was in my element.

I made no friends. I didn't want any. I was however, a natural at my chosen area of expertise, and within a very short space of time, I was allowed to make repairs to priceless paintings with little or no supervision. Almost immediately, my dedication was rewarded with more and more responsibility.

For the first time in my life, I was beyond happy.

I lived in a tiny, two bedroomed house overlooking a tributary of the Potomac River in Georgetown and travelled to study every day by bus. I had a cramped, white washed room, containing a small bed and a desk. I was in heaven being so close to the river, and it was paradise to look out of the French windows from my upstairs rooms at the water and work methodically into the wee small hours. I shared the house with my cousin, Carlisle, who worked as a political editor for Sky TV. We rarely saw one another as work kept us both busy for horrifically long hours every day. He frequently had to dash across the country on one press junket or another and it meant we gave one another space so we didn't get on each other's nerves very often. Carlisle was older than me but we had always got on quite well, although I do think he found me boring at times.

His mother, who looked after my cats, pleaded with me to help him find a girlfriend because at almost thirty five years of age, he was still resolutely single and a confirmed bachelor. Little did she know that he was a promiscuous gay man with a string of boyfriends on both sides of the ocean. I didn't give a damn whom he screwed, it wasn't my business and he was an adult, but I found it very funny that she had no idea that he preferred boys because he never tried to hide it. Even my parents knew.

It was a lovely little house and certainly didn't need a feminine touch, Carlisle took care of all of that and without any outside help, it was pristine, spick and span and OCD level neat. It was great. He did my laundry, cooking and shopping and all I had to do was trundle home at night from the college on Pennsylvania Avenue where I continued my studies. He was a nice guy and good company. We got on really well and he even came to exhibitions and galleries with me from time to time with his latest squeeze.

Trawling the streets of the city, I munched my way through every type of food my mother wouldn't allow me to sample when I lived at home in London. Burgers of every size and description imaginable, hot dogs, pizza and spicy food from south of the border that blew me away, washed down with gallons of Coke and Pepsi. Many a happy hour was spent exploring the banks of the Potomac whilst I indulged my junk food nirvana.

Carlisle was appalled at my dissolute dietary ways. He treated his body like a shrine and after the first few months, he reined me in and forced me to eat more healthily and made me drink water and low alcohol beer.

Washington and Georgetown were lovely. Both historically fascinating and culturally nourishing for an anorak like me, I spent every free moment devouring every fact and foible this haven of culture offered me. The usual tourist based landmarks were both unique and inspirational and I spent way too much time indulging my nerdiness. The Smithsonian became my haunt to the point that every guard and guide recognised me. But after a while, when I'd consumed every art work and museum possible, my feet began to itch and I needed something fresh and new.

I still loved my work and research, obviously, but I started to crave pastures new. After five years of absorbing every facet of this breathtaking city, I needed something new.

When Carlisle decided to settle down with the tall, slender, elegant black senator from Chicago that he'd been 'seeing' for several months, and moved in with him, I was left alone. How he explained their relationship away to my aunt, I still don't know, or care really. How Seth, Mr Senator, explained his constant absence to his wife and five kids was far more interesting! Saying that Carlisle helped him with his office needs seemed to appease the media and they settled down into easy coupledom surprisingly quickly and without raising too many eyebrows. And the fact that his wife was 'entertaining' a local doctor kept her happy too so it was a win win situation.

Struggling to pay the bills alone, despite cousin Carlisle's generosity at letting me live in his house paying only a pittance rent wise, I was forced to move into a tiny, one roomed apartment in a less salubrious part of town.

I hated it.

It was uninspiring, tatty and damp and I got cold after cold as I huddled over my tiny desk, trying to work with a naked, dim light bulb hanging from the centre of the room.

One morning, I woke up and decided this wasn't what I wanted out of life, and that I needed a complete change. Striding into work, I handed in my notice on a whim. Like everything else in my life, I thought of nothing but my own wants and needs. I just packed up my belongings, thanked Carlisle and his amour, hugged them goodbye, sent everything home to my parents, whether it was convenient for them to have all my tat or not, and boarded a plane to Italy.

For four months, I travelled to every major city and every region that took my fancy and discovered the flavours, scents, beauty and delights of the most beautiful country I'd ever seen.

I ate delicious, freshly caught tiny octopus in Sardinia. Hiring a moped, I traversed the coastline and feasted on local delicacies. The rugged, brutal seascape was breathtaking and for the first time in my life, my dirty brown hair took on a reddish tinge due to the ferocious sun. Tanned, I wandered around in shorts and a vest top, and got the attention of the local girls. I ignored them. My muddy brown eyes looked brighter and a more pleasant shade of chocolate against my golden hued skin and I allowed my usual stubble to grow freely.

The pasta of Sicily took my breath away, flavoured with squid ink and piled high with the most delicious shell fish I'd ever tasted. I lingered far longer than I planned to thinking I'd found heaven in a pile of flour and egg yolk as I sketched the rock pools.

Then, unbelievably, the pasta and shellfish in Napoli rivalled their southern counterparts and I felt like this place had been touched by the Gods themselves. Drinking an earthy red wine as I stared out across the Golfo di Napoli, and painted the Tyrrhenian Sea and Mount Vesuvius, I found a love in my painting that I hadn't experienced before. The rocky coast called to me like a siren and I felt at home in ways I never did in either London or Washington.

I indulged myself more than I should have when I entered the marshy Venetian Lagoon. Sitting by the canals in small cafés and restaurants, I gorged myself on the razor clams, sautéed in white wine as well as the other shell fish and sea food delicacies of that unique city.

Venice.

Beautiful, intoxicating Venice. Wandering the Piazza San Marco when there was a high tide was strange and odd. The water seemed to follow me and I waded through the tourist empty alleyways, squares and streets wearing a kagool and wellington boots and I began to think that the gentle whooshing of the water was a voice, calling to me

I just needed to eat more fruit, drink less wine and sleep more.

Staring at the Basilica, my heart swelled and I found a high wall to sit on and sketched it. The Canaletto's of London's National Gallery came to life as I travelled the canals.

Floating along the canal, beneath the Bridge of Sighs, I sketched like a maniac. Connecting the prison to the Doge's Palace, this stunning peace of architecture was the last thing that convicts saw before they were incarcerated and I drew and painted the views from both under it and through it repeatedly. I was enthralled and entranced by this place.

Deciding that I needed to see more, I jumped on a train and headed north and across country to Lombardy and firstly to the stunningly lovely city of Milan. The city inspired me and my creative juices flowed as I painted wildly in the beautiful piazzas. I ate risotto in the wilds of this region as I wandered around the vineyards and camped next to Lake Maggiore. The warm, Mediterranean climate, along with the heady scents of herbs made it paradise lost.

Long, warm, fragrant days and nights in Tuscany made me feel like I belonged as I wandered seemingly never ending dusty roads, beautifully bordered by field upon field of lavender or sunflowers and ate my way through every type of bread known to humankind. The wide sun kissed landscapes inspired me to paint and the warm, bright colours were so vivid that I was stunned I was capable of producing such studies. The birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, I wandered the museums and galleries of Florence before drinking the fortifying Chianti every night. Siena kept me a prisoner for weeks as I painted the cathedral and the most perfect stained glass I'd ever laid my eyes on, unable to pull my wandering feet away.

Deciding that my sun kissed freckled flesh needed some more sun than even this area could provide, I headed south. I spent an entire month camping in a small one-man tent on the beaches in Puglia. Everywhere else I'd visited seemed to melt away and the waves alone made me think that I'd found paradise.

The sea around this passionate coastline was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. Wild and untamed, it roared deafeningly as it hurled white, gigantic, rearing horse shaped waves at the shore, looking as if it wanted to destroy everything in its path. The water was the most vivid emerald green, streaked with violet, indigo and navy swirls, entangled with almost luminous seaweed and it coiled its way into my very soul, never giving me a moment's peace. The ribbons and tendrils of the kelp were spewed up onto the golden sandy and pebbly beaches in its rages and lay looking like wet hair every morning in piles and provided a damp safety for scuttling crabs and hiding, stranded jelly fish. The foamy spray was so salty, briny and pungent that after walking along the shore for a few hours, I was able to rub miniature crystals off my skin and taste the bitterness for hours afterwards.

Sitting on the rocks every night, drinking a cheap, blood red robust merlot wine by the light of my crackling, sparking fire, I was mesmerised by the churning soup of watery rage that swirled below me. Splashing droplets of crystal like water caused the bonfire to hiss and spit sparkling burning ash upwards in the night sky as I toasted my stick impaled bread. Voices and faces haunted my dreams and I spoke to no one other than when I replenished my meagre rations.

Unable to move away from the beach for some reason, I couldn't understand what was holding me there. I didn't know what the pull was that made me want to walk, fully clothed, into the Mediterranean and be consumed. Why on earth would I want to wade in and just keep walking until I could walk no more?

I don't like water.

How weird is that?

I hate water.

Strike that, I'm petrified of water.

I can't swim and didn't even like messing about in rock pools as a boy, but here, in this magical land, I was hypnotised by its strangely alluring and obvious beauty. Having fallen out of my parents boat when I was a small child and almost drowning, I usually stayed well away from water, but now, I needed to be close to a body of H2O at least once a day, though for a long time, I wasn't aware of that fact.

For the first time in my life, I drew and painted and sketched like someone possessed. Images of faces appeared in the waves and cresting water, wrapped in weed and I would draw in ways I had never done before. My style of painting was usually delicate, languid and plodding. My works were fine, fragile watercolours so studied and precise that they almost looked like photographs. Even the paintings in Tuscany and Venice, although more lively and unrestrained, still had something of a delicacy about them.

Not in Puglia.

The passions that this area dragged from the very centre of my being made me create visions that were the total antithesis of me and my usual art. Fast, rapid strokes of shockingly vibrant colours in oil and acrylic flew across the canvas. Splashes and swirls of fluid colour exploded from the end of my brushes as I all but hurled myself around, exhausting me, and when I was done, I was utterly spent. Most days I would wake up, hours after sunrise, cold, hungry and bewildered and staring at something I couldn't even remember producing. More than once, I was wet and covered in seaweed.

Finally, running low on money, materials and energy, I reluctantly headed north, feeling strangely bereft to be leaving the frenetic coastline that had taken a hold of my heart and pounded through my blood like a pulse.

On my first evening in Rome, I sat in a tiny family run restaurant, drank cheap white plonk and I tasted the milk filled, roasted intestines of much too young lambs in a rich sauce as I listened to rapid, aggressive sounding conversations in a language I didn't understand.

Rome.

Within an hour of walking the cobbled streets, Botticelli's statues screamed to me and I was intoxicated. After my first visit to the Vatican, I fell in love, and I didn't leave. It was also the birthplace of my favourite artist, John William Waterhouse, and it felt like home, despite not speaking more than a dozen words of the native tongue.

Fortunately, my reputation workwise had preceded me and I was offered a place at the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro within a week of landing in the eternal City. My Italian was limited to say the least, but they were kind to me and I learnt quickly.

Within a year, I was completely fluent to the point that I even dreamed in my new language and lapsed between the two languages embarrassingly at times, even when I talked to my mother and father on the telephone. I settled quickly into the routine of life in the eternal city, and lived alone in a small apartment in the Campo de' Fiori area of town. It was the most fascinating place I'd ever known and the market square was somewhere I spent many an early morning, drinking much too strong espresso coffee and eating sugary pastries as I sketched and people watched.

Many a day I would stroll along the fashionable streets and visit the proliference of modern art galleries. My every free moment was spent lingering over the smorgasbord of works of art that made me salivate as I tucked into every flavour of gelato the finest purveyor's had to offer.

My evenings were spent eating various delicacies that I'd become quickly addicted to, in small café's, alone, and from day one, I loved living in Rome. In fact, I really thought that I would spend the rest of my days living here. My parents visited every couple of months and seemed delighted that I was so settled at last. They were surprised by the change in my painting and level of skill.

Working life was the same as it had been in Washington. My colleagues all socialised together, leaving me alone. In the beginning the language barrier caused a few problems and despite them trying to include me, I refused, of course. As the months passed and my ability to communicate improved, they stopped inviting me when they left at the end of the day because I had turned them down so often. I would stay in the office and clean up the residual paperwork, alone. And it never changed. They would go their way, cordially and nicely enough, but I would always go mine.

Alone.

Always alone.

I was thirty three years of age and had never had a proper girlfriend.

Isn't that pathetic?

My cousin and his boyfriend visited me for a sort of romantic getaway from the prying eyes of the US Senate and were stunned by the dark, brooding, desperate paintings that decorated my apartment. These were my paintings from Puglia. Even I was surprised sometimes when I looked at them. Shocked even that such passion lived within me and the proliference of green, blue, black and indigo canvases meant that every room held at least five. Carlisle refused to believe that I'd painted them, knowing my more feminine, botanical style. He was overwhelmed by them and left, impressed by me for the first time in my life, taking three of my paintings with him promising to help me set up an exhibition at some point soon.

I wasn't sure about that.

I didn't like being singled out nor obvious in any way and these paintings were unlike anything else I'd ever created and I doubted that I would ever be consumed by that level of creativity again despite still painting and drawing every day.

When they returned to Washington after their visit, for the first time in my life, I felt lonely. At my age, I had no friends and no relationship and found the complexities of mixing the finely balanced concoctions needed to restore a masterpiece and finding new ways of preserving these irreplaceable insights into the human soul more alluring and irresistible than the wiles of any female.

The excitement that my work induced in me was beyond compare.

Orgasmic even.

And nothing—and I really do mean _nothing—_was able to conjure up the feelings in me that happened when I ran my finger over the thick layers of centuries old oil paint did. And, sadly, I made it obvious to every woman who approached me in Italy, that I wasn't interested.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd had sex, I wasn't still a virgin, thank Christ, but it still couldn't compete with my work.

Fast, fumbling, unsatisfactory sex—more often with my own hand, than a warm, pliant body, sadly—but I'd never had a proper girlfriend.

Having always been bookish and looking more like a rugby playing librarian than the hero's in the paintings I fell in love with, I wasn't exactly a great catch, physically. Girl's liked my face and muscular body, but I used to get more than a bit twitchy when they called me 'pretty' because that's not exactly what a man likes to be called. I bored them witless talking about nothing but art and the oval shaped ball as in rugby, I was so fond of and they rarely agreed to a second date, or even a second fuck.

The nearest I came to any sort of relationship was when I started having frantic and frenetic fumbling's between the dusty shelves of the art history section in the Ashmolean Museum. Having decided to leave London behind one summer when I was on holiday from university, just before the start of my final year, I signed up as a volunteer to get my hands on some of the books that would otherwise be out of my reach. I spent the whole of August helping to catalogue the works of Leonardo da Vinci and a voraciously sexual and seriously predatory American lecturer took a fancy to me.

God knows why, but she did.

She was twenty years older than me, divorced and living with her son in Oxford whilst on a sabbatical from her Californian college. And she seduced me the first day we met.

I didn't mind.

Up to that point, I'd never even kissed a girl so I put the whole thing down to yet another learning curve and allowed myself to be ravaged and moulded in her supple and very capable hands.

Every lunch time, she would strip me naked, apart from my dark rimmed glasses, socks and shoes, before she would give me a very satisfactory blow job. She would then pull up her flowing skirts revealing her naked body, and make me fuck her hard and fast against the old oak shelving and glass fronted cases and the priceless tomes held therein.

Then two or three evenings a week, she would come back to my small room in a local Bed and Breakfast, and demand a repeat performance.

She was attractive, lively and supremely confident, with masses of wild, red, untamed curls that shimmered and flounced even when she was sitting still.

When she rode me, holding my hands over her ample breasts, she would bounce up and down like something possessed. Her insane hair seemingly moved with a life of its own in a shocking cloud that billowed around us both. She reminded me of Medusa and she was always embarrasingly loud when she climaxed.

Really loud.

So loud, in fact, that all my neighbours and contemporaries knew precisely what we were up to in the hermetically sealed vaults in the basement as we _archived _documents after hours or in my small single bed.

When I returned to London in the September, physically exhausted, I expected her to keep in touch. By this point in time, I was addicted to her. We'd fucked in every way possible, and in some ways I hadn't known that existed to be honest. But no, within a couple of days, she'd replaced me with a new female student, who was even younger than me.

That seemed to be the pattern of my life. People liked the way I looked but when they got to know me and my boringly set in the mud ways, they rapidly lost interest.

Once I'd discovered sex and the wonderful sleep that washed over me after I orgasmed was appealing and I wanted more. Several fumbling assignations led to nothing but having my watch stolen after one encounter and an odd rash on another. I decided that a bottle of hand cream or a pot of Vaseline and a porn film was less risky and I wouldn't wake up covered in small crustacean like parasites, with my wallet missing.

Even that stopped when I settled into a happy pattern in my final stop, life in Rome satisfied my basest urges and I didn't even masturbate very often any more. After a few months of living here, I stopped painting, stopped sketching and stopped doing anything but eating, drinking too much wine, fishing or wandering along the banks of the Tiber, watching and working.

That was it.

Whereas in America and even in London, I felt like a total outsider, Rome was different. It was kind to me. Whatever small establishment I frequented at supper time, they welcomed me into their hearts and shared their fare with me. I loved it in this paradise and left only a couple of times, to return to England when my father was ill.

After visiting my parents for a second time, when I'd been there for two summers, I returned to find a surprise awaiting me.

A stiff, creamy white envelope, handwritten in an elaborate greeny blue curlicue style script was lying on the mat inside my door, without a stamp. The writing was swirly and lively and made my heart clench as it brought back memories of my camping holiday in Puglia.

It was a short, succinct note, immediately to the point, offering me my hearts-desire and life-long dream.

A chance to work for the Sotheby Collection in London.

Frowning, unable to believe what I was holding in my hands, I sat at my tiny desk and read, and re-read the beautifully penned letter several times over.

I hadn't applied for any other jobs because as I said, I was settled and content with my life in beautiful Rome and up until I received this letter, I had never considered another life. I certainly never even anticipated working anywhere else and more importantly, I never even dreamed that this opening would ever be a possibility.

I didn't want to leave Rome, of course I didn't, and for any other offer, I would have turned it down instantly. However, this particular collection housed the overwhelming obsession of my life. The painting that had owned me from the very first moment I'd seen it in a book when I was five years old and sitting with my grandmother.

The Siren, by John William Waterhouse.

The thought of being able to get close to this painting, to see it in its 'flesh' as it were, let alone to touch it, was intoxicating. This painting resides in a private collection and is rarely seen by anyone in the general populace so it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

After opening a bottle of wine, I turned my computer on and sat for hours staring at the screen as I tried to construct a response. My hand repeatedly returned to the thick paper, and I couldn't stop touching it, feeling a connection unlike anything else I'd ever felt. Emailing the person who had sent the letter was odd and felt disrespectful in many ways. The letter was handwritten, something I hadn't seen, business wise, for a very long time, and to _type_ an answer seemed wrong somehow.

The letter didn't ask me to apply for the job or to attend an interview.

No.

It offered me a job as a Senior Conservator outright. It came with an amazing salary and even an apartment in Kensington at a ridiculous low rent with all bills included in the paltry monthly amount. Something didn't feel _right _but the image of that picture, permanently etched into my brain, kept calling to me and I couldn't resist.

The way the letter was both scripted and structured seemed to hark back to by-gone days and I ran my fingers over the parchment like paper many times more, whenever my mind went blank.

Her name wouldn't stay out of my mind and more than once, I had to delete a paragraph I'd written because I found that I'd typed her moniker repeatedly.

It drove me nuts.

_Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan. Miss Isabella Swan._

Isabella Swan…

I vaguely considered that it was a beautiful name, reminiscent of something that arts and crafts, art nouveau or Pre-Raphaelite movements would use for their beautiful, flush faced ladies. But then I calmed my romantic delusions and castigated myself for my pre-pubescent like stupidity. Convincing myself she would be a dried out academic, like me, who would be greying and intense with about as much sexual allure and appeal as a squashed frog, I set to work composing my reply.

Thanking her for her offer, cautious as ever, I asked how she'd heard about me and why on earth, in a world swimming with art conservators every bit as good as me, she even considered contacting me in the first place. I said that I wouldn't be accepting her offer. However appealing that particular painting was, I still behaved in my usual, crusty manner and said that I was perfectly happy where I was, but thanked her for her kind consideration. There was no promise I would be allowed anywhere near the Waterhouse, or to even see it, so unless I was given a copper bottomed guarantee that I would be allowed to work on it, I wasn't giving up my perfect life in Rome.

Sending it away, with a twinge in my heart, I threw myself back into my Roman life and didn't think about it much as I got on with living.

I carried on as before, apart from in the night.

The night was different.

During the darkness, dreams of being wrapped in emerald green seaweed as I floated amongst churning waves, before I was dragged down into the icy depths to my doom, haunted me. Whispered promises of love and eternity drove me to the point of insanity and I was forced to take herbal sleeping remedies to silence the irresistible pull of something. As the days passed, I looked more and more drawn and tired, so tired in fact that even my usually oblivious and ambivalent work colleagues started to comment on my dishevelled appearance.

As summer began to turn into a warm, mellow autumn, I wandered around the cobble stone alleys, unable to rest or settle. All of a sudden, the urge to draw the honey, sandstone and granite buildings gripped me with such a fervour I even missed a couple of days work. This was unheard of as I was dedicated to the point of obsession. Having not picked up a stick of charcoal or brush for almost two years, here I now was, every day, for at least several hours, sitting and scribbling frantically away with chalks. The passion of Puglia returned, ten-fold, and I managed unbelievably to capture the light and warmth of the season perfectly, day after day, unable to stop.

My walls became more and more cluttered as my collection of works grew and even I could see that my ability was growing and changing exponentially. Rome drew emotions out of me that I'd never experienced before. I even sketched and drew when I sat in café's and bars at the end of each working day. Very soon, other customers started to notice my work and I began to get commissions for charcoal and line drawings of their lovers, children and even pets.

As the colder weather began to bite, I wrapped up warmly and started to sit next to the Tiber every weekend and created amazing pictures. That might sound conceited, but they were. Wearing fingerless gloves, I painted with a fervour that bewildered me. Frantic creations in oils that were so thick in places, they added texture unlike anything I'd done before. The swirling pools of inky coloured water were brooding and dark and there was a pervading air of brooding anticipation about each canvas completed. Almost as if I was waiting for something.

Stupid I know.

December arrived, cold and crisp and Carlisle dropped in to visit, with Seth in tow, en route to visit his mother and my parents in England. They were stunned by the transformation to both my apartment and my appearance. There was no longer an inch of wall space available and they both agreed that my painting had taken on a life of its own. They also told me that, as they had promised me, they had shown my gift to a friend of theirs. He owned a gallery and wanted to exhibit my work. They took another four with them in their luggage as their Christmas present from me and to show their friend.

Sitting at the table of my favourite restaurant the night before they left, Carlisle told me I looked terrible. Much too thin with shadows around my eyes that were almost midnight blue were testament to the fact that I rarely slept and my clothes were shabby and stained.

They both looked as if they'd just stepped out of Dior's front window. Sighing, I poo poohed their concerns, and after ordering some wine, our conversation drifted to other things. Without thinking, I told them about the offer of a job at the Sotheby Collection.

Carlisle frowned and stared at me, pausing as he was about to take a sip of his wine. "And you didn't _take _it?" he asked sounding and looking stunned. "What the hell, Edward? Are you nuts?"

I explained that my life in Rome was so perfect and complete, that I couldn't bear to leave it behind me.

Seth looked like he was watching a tennis match as his head flashed from side to side as we argued back and forth.

"Did you even go for the interview? Please tell me you at least did that? To see what it involved?" he asked, still sounding stunned.

"No."

"Why?"

"There was no interview. Nothing. She offered me the job right off without even meeting me first and there was a flat and everything else I would need to move back to England immediately, offered," I said, sheepishly as Carlisle inhaled sharply.

"And you didn't even think about it?" he asked as his voice rose ever higher.

"No."

"Why the fuck not, Edward?" he asked, shocked.

"Because I didn't want to leave Rome, that's all." I said, trying to sound nonchalant and dismissive and failing. My heart sank a little when I realised that I'd made a massive mistake.

"I call bullshit!" he hissed, angrily. "You're scared! That's it, isn't it? What if your life's dream turns out not to live up to your impossibly high expectations, Edward Cullen! That's it, isn't it?"

Staring at him, I didn't respond. I couldn't. I knew, deep down, he was right and I had blown the opportunity of a life time.

"Did she contact you again?" he asked.

"No. Why would she?" I said, quietly. "I rejected the offer, they would have just moved on to the next person on their list, wouldn't they?"

"You're an arse." He said, dismissively as he quaffed half a glass of wine in one gulp.

"Thanks for that. Can't you just say that I did well sticking to my convictions and staying where I'm happiest?"

"You don't look fucking happy to me, Edward Cullen!" he said. "You're scrawny and look like a fucking tramp. These Italians certainly know how to dress; I'm surprised they haven't refused to let you into work without a suit on!"

"Shut up, Carlisle." I huffed. "I'm perfectly content where I am and as I am. I love my life here."

"Keep telling yourself that, Edward," he said, "And you might just end up believing it in the end. I can't believe you turned the job down. I really can't."

"I don't understand?" Seth said at last, "It's his life, Carlisle. If he's happy here, leave him alone. Why is there such a big deal about this?"

"Exactly," I said, less convincingly now as the feeling of regret slithers into my stomach and makes my heart clench. "My life, Carlisle, my choices and decisions…"

"Fucking hell! You're so full of pretentious shit these days! Where the hell did that come from? Huh? When we were kids, you were so fucking obsessed with mermaids that I wondered if you were bloody gay as well! I'm not camp, but you fucking were! You minced around chattering away about the bloody things the entire time! And you're far better looking than me, Eddie boy, whether you can see it or not," he laughed now, irony colouring his tone to an even deeper level of sarcasm. "Every boyfriend I've ever had, apart from Sethie, has fancied you like crazy! You must have known that?"

"Shut up, Carlisle!" I hissed. "They did not! Stop exaggerating! It's just because I'm friendly and never had an issue with you, or them, being gay. And there was fuck all wrong or weird about me when I was a kid! I just loved the paintings of the New Romantics, that's all!"

"Yeah! Right, Princess!" he chuckled. "Are you sure you aren't more like your big cousin that you like to admit? Huh? You still aren't exactly sewing your wild oats with the female populace, are you pretty boy?"

Sigh.

"You liked mermaids?" Seth asked, gruffly, rubbing his fingers over his brow before he took his glasses off and frowned, looking confused. "As a kid? Girls with fish tails?"

"MerPEOPLE are both male and female, you know, Seth. Don't be so closed in your ideas!"

"Me? Closed in my ideas? Are you kidding me? I'm a black, gay politician, who happens to be married with kids but in love with your MALE cousin, and you think I'm not open minded? Are you nuts? You're a GUY, Eddie! Didn't you get your head pounded by the other kids at school? Did you tell your friends about your fish obsession? Shit… your parents must have _freaked!_"

"They aren't fish! And no one knew." I said tightly. "I kept it well hidden. I just liked the way the scales and shells that adorned them were painted and shimmered in the light. It had nothing else to do with it, Seth!"

"Don't talk bollocks, Edward! Your parents knew! Of course they fucking did! It didn't help when you wriggled up and down the stairs inside a pillow case and even insisted on wearing one when you were in the shower to keep your legs rigid. The whole family used to worry about it, I'm a lot older than you remember? Fuck, my mother even knitted you a bloody merMAN for your tenth birthday pretending that it was Neptune because he was holding a trident! Don't be an arse, we all knew about your sodding obsession. It was even funnier because you don't like fucking water and wouldn't even get in the bath or a paddling pool! I hope Auntie Esme hasn't still got the photograph of you, wearing your pillow case, waving a loofah around with a pair of her tights around your neck because you said it felt like seaweed the way it draped over your skin when they were wet and another pair over your head so that they were like your '_flowing _fucking _tresses!"_ Carlisle barked.

Ugh.

"Shut up, Carlisle!"

"Are you kidding me?" Seth said, sounding stunned.

Terrific.

He was looking at me as if I par boiled goldfish before I ate them.

"Carlisle! Will you fucking stop this now!"

Ignoring me, he grabbed his lovers hand and held it tightly as he continued, looking more serious now. "He had a poster of this painting that he was totally obsessed with on his bedroom wall. Our grandmother bought it for him much to his parent's horror. She encouraged his mermaid kink and he was her favourite. It was of a girl on a rock, playing a guitar, with a man drowning below her and a ship smashed up on the rocks. He could paint it with his eyes closed and did nothing but stare at it without blinking. It was quite freaky to see. He was NINE, Seth!" he laughed so loudly that everyone in the restaurant turned to look at us.

"Fuck off…" I muttered as I emptied my glass much too quickly. Blushing crimson, I poured more wine and glowered at him.

"He would sit and talk to the picture for fucking _hours_! He was convinced that the girl in it saved his life when he fell in a lake in Wales and almost drowned. Auntie Esme and Uncle Emmett wanted to send him off for therapy or some shit because they thought he was a nutter but he refused to go! It didn't help when you bought all those fucking old VHS tapes of ancient films called Miranda or some shit, Edward! And don't start me about how many copies of Splash he had. Do you know, Sethie, he thought that Daryl Hannah was a real mermaid! He wanted my aunt to take him to America to meet her!"

"Fuck off, Carlisle! I was a little boy! I thought her tail was real, okay? I grew out of it!" I barked, "Mermaids play lyres, not fucking guitars, and I almost drowned in Scotland, not Wales, you arse," I said, angry and humiliated now. "And no one kicked my head in, Seth, because no one knew! And I'll have you fucking know that Glynis Johns was fucking great in those mermaid movies…" I finished, turning my body to face him.

"What about when your friends visited? And you talked to the fucking poster? Weren't they looking for films like the Goonies instead of Splash? And they found mermaid garbage instead?" Seth asked, staring at me with wide eyes, not even laughing now, as a look of pity washed over his handsome features.

Just then, Lucia, the restaurant owner's daughter, wandered over and replenished our bottle of wine as well as a platter of various breads and a dish of warm olive oil as she took our order. "Would you like anything else, Edward?" she asked in a heavy accent as she leaned closer to me and licked her painted lips. Even I couldn't help but stare at her ample breasts as they all but spilled out of her low, frill necked top.

"No, thank you." I said, forcing my eyes away from the crevice that offered so much pleasure to various appendages of my body, and nodding she walked off to fill our orders with a downturned mouth.

"Are you blind, Edward?" Seth asked me, quietly as we all watched Lucia's sashaying hips as she walked slowly across the room.

"What do you mean?" I asked, scowling. "I have exemplary eyesight I'll have you know! The last optician I visited said that I have twenty twenty vision! Why the hell are you asking me that?" I responded, affronted.

"Because that lovely girl was eye-fucking you just now! Are you sure you aren't gay?"

"No, I'm not." I huffed, folding my arms as I turned to look at Lucia once more. "And she wasn't eyeing me up! Stop talking shit!" I said, sounding unconvincing even to myself.

"You're a good looking guy, Edward, if I wasn't fucking your cousin, I'd certainly give you a go," Seth said, grinning at me. Ugh. "Why can't you get that girls, and boys, are going to be attracted to you?"

"I'm not interested in having a relationship," I said, and my heart sank in the realisation that the words coming out of my mouth were actually the truth.

I was destined to live alone for the rest of my life.

"Why not?" Carlisle asked, looking at me with a furrowed brow. "Are you really that content with your own company?"

"Yes," I said, raising my chin in defiance, "I am."

"So come on," Seth said again, "You didn't answer my previous question. Why didn't your friends take the piss out of your mermaid obsession? They must have seen them, when they came to visit?"

"They didn't know about it and no one came to visit." Carlisle said, more quietly now, cutting across me and answering on my behalf. "Our Edward has always been a loner and never brought anyone home, male or female."

"That's really sad, Edward. I hate to think of you being lonely." Seth said quietly.

"I'm not lonely, thank you very much!" I said, affronted.

"Do you still collect mermaids?" Carlisle asked as I turned to look at him and flared my nostrils. "Some of the faces in your paintings look like that one you loved you know? Did you know that?"

"Fuck off, Carlisle." I said, flatly, feeling totally deflated now.

"Come to England with us for Christmas," Seth said quietly as he leaned closer and grabbed my hand.

"What?"

"Please, Edward? I can't stand the thought of you being on your own, even if you say you are happy here. Please? What's the point in being a fucking politician if you can't get your own way now and then! I can pull a few strings and get you a flight, come with us. I'm sure your aunt and parents would love it."

Staring at him, I considered this offer. I was spending less and less time with people now that I was drawing and painting so much more and I really needed to catch up on some sleep. My art and work consumed my every work moment and I wasn't eating or drinking as much as I used to.

"Okay." I said flatly. "It would be good to visit a couple of galleries." I said as I instantly began to formulate a plan.

"And your parents," Carlisle said as he dipped some warm, rosemary focaccia into the garlicky oil.

"Yes, of course, them too."

"Isabella…" I said, without thinking.

"Is that her name?" Carlisle asked, "The waitress?"

"No. Um… no, her name is Lucia…"

"Then who's Isabella?" Seth asked.

"No one…"

"You are strange, Edward," Seth said as he shuffled closer to Carlisle. I guess I make him nervous with my oddness.

But when Carlisle flushed and looked at me, embarrassed, I guessed Seth was doing something altogether different than trying to get away from me.

_Miss Isabella Swan…_

Shit.

Where the hell had her name come from?

Ugh.

"Yes. Okay, Seth, thank you." I said without thinking. "If you can swing it, I will come home for Christmas, but fuck, I haven't bought any presents!"

"Give everyone a painting, just make sure you sign them, Edward," Seth said. "Our friend, Jasper, has a gallery in Chicago. He's really keen on showing your work, and I mean REALLY keen. He's quite keen on meeting the artist too. Shame you're straight!"

Smiling, I nodded and kept drinking.

"Joking aside, Edward," Carlisle said, "Make sure they are signed, Jasper says they will be worth quite a lot of money in the future. He thinks you've got a talent that he hasn't seen for a long time."

Wow.

"Are you serious?" I asked, choking on my wine.

"Yes, he wants to set up a show for the summer so you'd better have at least fifty paintings ready for shipping to the States by then. But, looking at your apartment, I'm guessing you've got many hundreds of a high enough standard, Edward," Seth said.

"Christ…" I whimpered, as nerves clutched hold of me. "I don't think I can do that…"

Several hours of chatting, six bottles of wine, half a dozen more attempts at chatting me up by Lucia and mountains of pasta later, we staggered back home to pack for my impromptu trip home.

I needed to remember that Carlisle, Seth, aphrodisiac shell fish and too much wine were not a good combination. Even I blushed at the noises coming from the bedroom as I buried my head beneath a pillow and duvet in a feeble bid to block out their passionate bellows.

Seth was as good as his word and the next afternoon, we flew British Airways, first class, to London Heathrow with a hold full of my artworks—signed—and Seth's Louis Vuitton.

I never returned to Rome.

Sitting in the luxurious wide leather seats, I picked a copy of the London Times newspaper to read with my afternoon cream tea. I hadn't read a paper in over a year and thought I'd better at least familiarise myself with my native tongue in writing before we landed. Gasping, I sat bolt upright and promptly spilled a cup of Earl Grey all over the crotch of my new Levis.

I had a suitcase full of new clothes, making me look reasonably presentable, and had a shave and hair cut before I boarded the plane. Carlisle had taken me shopping, refusing to be seen with me in my paint stained garb and looking like a tramp!

The headline of the newspaper almost brought me to my knees.

"_**Valuable Painting Damaged in attack by Vandals**__**"**_

"_**The Siren—the renowned painting by John William Waterhouse and in a private London collection, was, today, damaged in a shock attack. The painting, which hasn't been seen by the general public for over half a century, has apparently been damaged beyond repair. Art conservationists from all over the world are being consulted. But the overall consensus seems to be that as the paint has been removed to below the surface of the canvas it seems that hope is fading that a full repair will be possible."**_

My heart sank and I gasped as vomit, tears and rage rushed their way up my oesophagus and threatened to project all over the crisply dressed air steward who had been giving me the eye since we took off from Leonardo da Vinci airport twenty minutes earlier.

Oh God.

Staring at Carlisle, I couldn't hear what he was saying to me. I could see his mouth moving and Seth was now crouched beside me, clutching my upper thigh. He was a little bit too close to my balls for comfort but I was in so much shock, he could have yanked my cock out and blown me and I doubt I would have noticed to be honest.

"EDWARD!"

"What?"

"You've just fucking puked all over my fucking Armani suit!" Seth was yelling.

"Sorry."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Carlisle yelled as the steward began mopping my vomit splattered t-shirt with a damp cloth.

"She's dead."

"Who the hell is dead?" Seth asked as he frantically rubbed his jacket.

"My muse…"

….

On arriving in London, I became like someone unhinged. Instead of spending much time with any of my family, I contacted every one of my earlier colleagues trying to find out what had happened to my Siren.

Bit by bit I uncovered the fact that someone had broken into the gallery and picked the pigment from the drowning man's face. No one had seen it, but it rendered him to no more than a creamy oval topped with floppy, dark brown curls amidst the foaming brine.

Why would someone do that?

This painting was a masterpiece and my heart's desire, why would someone violate it like this? What on earth could they get from such blatant, cruel vandalism?

Christmas came and went and I tried to join in but I really couldn't think of anything other than my Siren and what I could do to help restore it. My aunt made me a jumper with a merman knitted on the front of it much to Carlisle's amusement and Seth's abject horror. Just to piss him off, I wore it on Christmas day and topped it off with a sparkly green hat.

Carlisle said that I needed a symbol added to my signature that showed it was me, a bit like a water mark. I chose a mermaid's tail and spent the afternoon decorating the corner of my artwork accordingly.

Even my father, who found my painting uninspiring, was shocked by the change in my style and sat for hours, discussing the various facets of each work. That surprised me and we had a lovely afternoon together, drinking cold beer and chatting like friends about something other than rugby or work for the first time ever.

After visiting the Tate Britain to bathe in several Waterhouse paintings, I raised the subject with an ex-colleague who worked there about my idea. I'd been working on how to repair canvas when I was in Washington and had invented a way of weaving replacement fabric from underneath, almost like the darning my granny used to do when she got a hole in her stockings. And I felt like I could use this technique to return the Siren to its former glory.

I hunted high and low to find the phone number of Miss Isabella Swan and eventually, after buying off another old colleague with two of my Roman paintings, I managed to get a telephone number for her and without any nerves, I called her.

She didn't sound surprised by my call, oddly enough and we arranged to meet two days later. Her voice was soft and gentle and strangely ageless. Usually, someone sounds 'young,' 'mature' or 'old'—but she didn't. She sounded quiet and almost breathless.

Arriving at the large, nondescript building in Kensington by taxi, I was ushered down to the basement after filling in complicated forms and showing three different types of identification, including a driving licence and my passport.

I was left in a short, dark corridor and pointed towards a door at the end of it and told to knock, once only.

"Good luck," the security guard whispered as he shuffled away quickly. Frowning at him, not knowing what he meant, I stared at a small, unimpressive rectangular, plastic plaque showing the name of the expert housed within.

Dr Isabella M. Swan

Of course she was a doctor. Having many more qualifications than me meant that she was allowed and entitled to use this prefix to her name. Yes, I'd read up on her and her working history on line.

How pathetic was that?

Doing as instructed, I tapped on the wood lightly.

"Enter."

Opening the door, I stopped dead in my tracks. She was nothing like I expected her to be. She looked young, yet middle aged, conversely, with light gingery red hair, twisted up into a tight, high bun and a pair of dark rimmed glasses that sat on the end of her tiny, slightly upturned nose.

I noticed these things.

I'm an artist.

I'm supposed to be observant.

Not knowing what to do, I rubbed my suddenly sweaty palms on the front of my chinos and strode purposely across the room offering her my hand.

As her tiny fingers slipped into my large palm, we both gasped as an electrical current shot up my forearm and I jerked backwards.

"Um… Good morning?" I mumbled as I stared into her light green eyes. "My name is…"

"Edward Cullen. I know who you are. Good morning. I'm pleased to meet you at last," she said, tightly, not sounding as if she meant it.

She had a plain face. Well, she seemed plain to me. Or rather, the way she wore her hair and spectacles took away any feminine prettiness that she might have had and she looked pinched and sort of sad. Wearing skinny jeans and a tight t-shirt, she had a young, firm body that seemed totally at odds with the way her face looked.

Her body language was spiky and unwelcoming and as she told me to sit down, she began to pour me a cup of hot, pungeant amber liquid. Everything about her seemed to be cold and clinical and she was not friendly in the slightest.

Her office was plain. White, wood and stainless steel with mountains of paper everywhere and an ugly strip light that was much too bright and glaring. A small laptop sat in the middle of her desk and the only nod to femininity was a tiny jug of anemone's on the top of a filing cabinet.

All in all, it was a bleak and deeply uninspiring space.

"You turned my offer down, Mr Cullen," she said. This wasn't a question; it was a statement, pure and simple.

"Yes." I said, sipping my tea. "I was happy in Rome and didn't want to leave."

"Why are you here now then? If you were so very content in Italy, why are you here?"

"As I explained on the telephoned, I saw what had happened to the Siren. I've been working on a few ideas that I think might help so I'm here to offer you my help. That painting was the reason I became involved in the art world and it deserves to be restored, if it's possible." I stated.

"Well, you aren't the only conservator who has offered their services, Mr Cullen and the job I offered you no longer exists." She said, sounding annoyed as she refilled our cups.

"That's not why I'm here," I explained. "I don't want paying; I'm staying in London for a little while, visiting my family so I have free time to help. Please let me help? I need to help… that painting… it… I don't know how to explain it to you…" I said, lamely. "It means everything to me… I have to do this…"

Staring at me with her oddly mesmeric, unblinking eyes, she said nothing for the longest of times as she frowned deeply.

"Okay." she said, putting her cup down and standing up, "Come with me, Mr Cullen."

"Edward, please…" I said.

"What?"

"My name. It's Edward. Mr Cullen is my father!" I said, trying to lighten the mood.

I failed.

"I think we'll keep things on a professional level, Mr Cullen, don't you agree?" she said, coolly as she led me to a flight of stairs and we descended to the level below the basement.

"Okay…"

The room was colder than I was used to working in and as she reached the furthest wall, she slid a stainless steel panel back and I stopped breathing.

There, in front of me was the most perfect picture I'd ever seen.

Or it would have been if it hadn't been damaged.

Walking closer, so close that my nose was almost touching the oil covered surface, my hands twitched to touch the face of my beautiful Siren.

"Oh. My. God…" I said, foolishly.

"What do you think of her, Mr Cullen?" Miss Swan asked and as I turned around, she smiled. "Does she live up to your exacting expectations, or not?"

Her entire face lit up so brightly that she looked beautiful. She had an ethereal prettiness that lit her from the inside and I don't know what pulled me more, the desire to remove her glasses, or the urge to touch the painting.

"She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen…"

"You mean that don't you?" she said and as I continued staring at her, I nodded mutely.

"I fell in love with my Siren when I was a small child." I stated, sounding embarrassing even to my own ears.

"I know you did. Call me Bella and I will call you Edward," she said without giving me any clue as to what has changed her mind. "Let's get to work, shall we?"

Dressing in white coats, we put on a pair of gloves each and as she carried the painting to a work bench, we looked at it through magnifying, lit, glass.

The damage wasn't as serious as I'd at first feared.

Someone had obviously used a sharp object to scrape the paint away and in the process, they had damaged the canvas below but not so badly that we couldn't fix it.

"Aren't you hungry, Edward?" she suddenly asked.

"No!" I said, "Why?"

"It's after midnight," she explained, "You've been here for over twelve hours. We should really leave you know."

"Oh." I said, petulantly, "Do we have to leave? I don't mind staying all night! I want to carry on with this!"

"Yes," she said, laughing, "We do have to leave, before security throws us out!"

Her laugh was like a tinkling bell and it brightened the room and my spirits considerably.

Parting on the steps of the building, I asked her if I could come back the next morning, she laughed and said she looked forward to it.

And so this became the pattern of our days and I never gave Italy, or my job there, a second thought.

Isabella and I became closer and closer and in no time at all, we were spending every waking moment together and there was nowhere else I would rather be and with no one else.

Within a very short length of time, I had repaired the canvas much to Bella, and the gallery's, delight, and we began to construct the exact pigment and colours of the paints we would need to replace the damaged face of the drowning man.

Every day we would walk around the edge of the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park, the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, after a quick visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and even long sauntering ambles along the banks of the Thames as we drank take away coffees and just talked.

January in London has a very odd, unique colour and spending time in the frosty, weak sunlit city, filled my heart with joy. The fact that for the first time in my life I had a friend of sorts fought to come to the front of my mind on more than one occasion but I resolutely ignored it. I loved spending time with her. She was funny, bookish and deeply intellectual and appealed to me on levels that no other female ever had. I didn't fancy her, but I was intoxicated by her and her brain and skill with a paint brush fascinated me.

"You don't like water, do you Edward?" she asked me as we sat in the garden in Doggett's, a pub and restaurant overlooking Blackfriars Bridge on the south bank of the river, wearing thick coats, hats, scarves and woolly gloves.

"No."

"Then why do you need to be near it every day?"

"I don't."

"You do, Edward! Every time we have a break, you head towards water of some kind. Every painting you've ever asked to work on has a body of water in it somewhere. Didn't you notice that? Well I noticed," she said as I shook my head slowly, "I've read your resume, I know exactly what you've worked on in the past and you always work on water-filled studies."

Up until this point, I hadn't.

"Um…" I mumbled. "That's not right, Bella. It isn't. I only walk to places that are close to work. I wouldn't want to be near water. Of course I wouldn't. Why would I? Water scares me."

"Why?" she asked. "I love water. I could stay in water all the time… I love to close my eyes and drop downwards into the dark depths… I never want to get out…"

Staring at her, I knew for some odd reason that she was telling the truth.

"I fell in a lake in Scotland when I was three and almost died." I said, without emotion. "We were on holiday on our little boat, in the middle of a huge loch, on the Ardverikie estate, and my parents weren't watching me. I leaned too far over the side and fell overboard. I dropped like a stone and ridiculously, I imagined someone had my foot and was pulling me under, but my father dived in and rescued me and my mother leaned over and yanked me out. I cried when she freed me."

"You cried?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It sounds silly now. Really silly, but I didn't want to be rescued; I wanted to float away with the person who was with me."

"Someone was with you? You remember that? Who was with you?" Bella asked, frowning as she twirled one of her ringlets absentmindedly. I wanted to touch her and fought to control my hands.

"I don't know who she was. I saw her face briefly before she turned around and swam away as I was being pulled out. I just know that she sang beautifully and I didn't want it to end."

"She?"

"Yes. I was sure there was a girl with me. She was singing and laughing and her hair was lovely. It was such a vivid green…"

"Green?" Bella snorted, laughing before she took a large gulp of her rich red wine. "Who the hell has green hair?"

"I know. How odd is that? Who has green hair? I was told I was being stupid and I was just frightened. My mother said it was just the weed at the edge of the loch that had wound its way around my legs and that it simply looked like long hair, and I know now she was right, obviously, but at the time it felt so real… so real…"

"Yes. I remember…" Bella said.

"What do you mean?" I said, looking at her, scowling. "How can you remember?"

"Oh! No! I didn't mean I remember that occasion, Edward! How could I? I just mean I remember how it feels to be floating underwater and not want to come back to the surface. I never want to come back to the top…"

"Yes…" I said, watching her face as it seemed oddly confused.

"What was it like?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Drowning. What did it feel like? Were you frightened?"

"No. Once the pain from the cold stopped, it felt lovely."

"You were in pain? I didn't know that!"

"How could you know that?" I asked.

"No, you didn't understand what I meant. I meant I didn't know that cold water hurt."

"It did hurt. I was in agony. I couldn't breathe and my chest clenched and it was excruciating. I was trying to scream but I couldn't because my mouth filled up with water and weed and I panicked. Obviously. When the girl started to sing to me and stroked my leg, I stopped being frightened and the cold disappeared. It felt like I'd gone to heaven and I was in the presence of an angel. Death doesn't scare me anymore because I felt like I'd died already. Does that make sense?"

"Was she lovely?"

"Who?"

"The girl?" Bella asked. "The girl in the water, Edward. Do you remember what she looked like? Was she beautiful?"

"Yes," I said. "She was tiny with the most wonderful hair and eyes. She glowed in the water. Like a pearl. Yes, that's what she looked like, a perfectly opalescent pearl… she was lovely. Like my Siren…"

"Like me?" Bella said as she undid her tight bun and as she shook her head, her usually pale auburn looking hair tumbled out. I gasped loudly as her beautiful crimson hair spilled down passed her waist in its fiery waves.

I know my colours. I'm an artist for fuck sake, but that was a colour without a name.

Titian.

Flame.

Russet.

Scarlet.

Nothing was appropriate.

No, Bella Swan's hair was a colour totally unique to her. More red than pink but at the same time more pink than orange.

Her skin shone in the weak sunshine and as she pulled her thick rimmed spectacles from her tiny face, her pale green eyes suddenly flashed like emerald's, dazzling me. Her tight shocking green t-shirt just enhanced her freshly revealed attributes and I sat, open mouthed and stared at her.

"So she was lovely?" she asked again.

"Yes, so lovely… beyond perfect… oddly, her hair was just like yours…" I said, stunned by the vision sitting before me. "You're beautiful…" I whispered. "Your hair…"

"Silly, Edward! You said her hair was green! Mine very obviously isn't! I know you aren't colour blind, I've watched you working! Is this the first time you've seen my face properly? The first time that you've really looked at me?" she asked suddenly sounding slightly sad.

"You usually wear glasses… and your hair…"

"Yes. I usually cover my hair or tie it up. It gets in the way of work, so I have to tuck it away, do you see? Now, it's time to get back to the lab, come on!" she giggled in an unusually girly way as she grabbed my hand and pulled me upright as she pulled her hair and twisted it back into its usual confinement.

"Oh… oh, yes. It is…" I finished, looking up at the clock.

Our lives ran parallel and I found myself spending more and more time with her. The fact that she loved sushi more than anything else unnerved me a bit as I wasn't a fan at first, but as the weeks slipped into months, I started to enjoy it. She loved totally raw fish and wouldn't even dip it into the various sauces that accompanied it. She classed herself as a pescatarian but I rarely saw her eating anything other than fish and shellfish and the way she devoured raw oysters was strangely arousing.

We worked long, long hours and just before the painting was almost complete, she asked me to come in one Sunday to get finished more quickly.

Arriving at the studio, I was surprised to see that I was alone. Bella's time keeping was impeccable and she was more studious than I was so this was unusual.

Shrugging, I took off my winter accoutrements and donned my white coat before I settled down to work.

A noise made me look up and there, standing in the door way, was Bella Swan, wearing nothing but an iridescent, devore robe.

"What are you doing?" I gasped in shock.

"I want you… so I'm trying to seduce you, Edward," she said, quietly as she dropped the sumptuous fabric from her shoulders. "Our work here is almost done and I can't risk losing you again. So I have no choice but to act now."

I didn't have a clue what she meant, but my mouth opened and closed in surprise as the velvet pooled around her ankles like a small, greeny blue pond.

"You want me?" I asked, in disbelief.

It was now April and we'd spent five to six days together, every week, in a bid to restore our passion to its former glory.

"Yes. I do. I want you with all my heart. How can't you know that already? We have been together every moment… Touch me, Edward…" she said, her voice calm and even, despite the fact that my breathing was coming in panting gasps. Watching her with stunned eyes, she stroked her fingers along her hip, over her abdomen and downwards to cover her naked, hairless crotch.

"Wh… wha… what?" I stammered, convinced that not only was the dimmed lighting playing tricks with my eyes, but with my hearing as well.

"I want you… touch me… make love to me… take me…"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This perfect, beautiful, sweet girl wanted me to touch her body.

Swallowing thickly, I allowed my eyes to roam over properly for the first time. She looked as if she was carved from alabaster as she stood in all her naked glory before me in a widening pool of water.

I meant to ask her why she was wet, but I couldn't make my mouth work as I continued to stare at her.

Her small, perfect, rose tipped breasts called to me and my mouth watered and fingers twitched as I shuffled towards her.

"Take your clothes off…" she said.

Not needing telling twice, I ripped my lab coat off, before I yanked my white t-shirt over my head as I stared into her emerald green eyes. I almost broke my nails in my frantic desperation to undo my button fly.

Shoving the hard denim downwards, my tight boxer shorts suffered the same fate as I kicked my shoes and socks off so fast, they flew across the room.

Her damp hair fell about her shoulders in waves and clumps, similar to the seaweed as it wrapped around the rocks in Puglia. Her skin had a damp, salty tang and shone with a luminescence like the salted sand in the light of a full moon. She had a silvery sparkle about her hips and thighs that looked, oddly, when she moved as if she had scales.

I thought I needed new glasses.

"Kiss me, Edward…" she sighed and as I touched her shoulders, I leaned down and pressed our lips together for the very first time. As she opened her mouth to me, I groaned as her silky soft, cool and wet tongue slithered over mine.

We kissed for the longest time, our levels of passion building exponentially as she clung to me.

"More…" she moaned, as she pulled her mouth away. "I need more…"

My mouth travelled down her cool, slender torso, sucking, nipping and licking, tasting her saline flavour as it did so. Trailing my tongue over, in and around her belly button, she groaned and clutched her digging fingers into my scalp and shoulders painfully. Draping backwards over the hard marble bench, she spread her thighs as I moved lower. Sliding my nose up and down her lips, she grasped the back of my head and forced me closer. Taking the hint, I gently licked up and down her wetness.

She tasted like the sea. Stunned, I pulled back and stared at her. "You've been swimming?"

Ignoring my question, she sighed and groaned as she tugged my head lower. "Harder!" she ordered, "Suck me!"

Doing as she demanded, I took her tiny, erect clitoris between my lips and sucked as she pulled my hair so tightly, I feared I would be rendered bald.

"Oh! OH!" she squealed as, continuing to suck rhythmically, I slid first one, then two fingers into her slickened body and moved them in and out slowly, fighting against her tightness. Increasing my speed, I curled my fingers upwards, finding the tiny patch of roughened skin deep inside her and moved them harder and faster. I'd never done that before and was usually fucked, never the one who did the fucking, but this was completely different.

Almost instantly, her muscles clamped down on me, stopping my motions. "FUCK!" she screeched as her body contracted and pulsed quickly against my digits as her body arched and lifted upwards.

Gasping in shock at the noises coming from her mouth, I froze as the liquids coming from her spasming body flooded my invading hand like a small puddle. The sound of her screeching was terrifying in its eerie cry and stunned, I pulled back to stare at her once more as her body convulsed in her orgasm. The echoing cries were unlike anything else I'd ever heard and trying to stand, I wanted to run away.

Eerie and otherworldly.

I thought I needed an early night and to stop drinking so much wine thinking crap like that. Otherworldly? Like what? Vampire? Ghost? Werewolf? Shit…

Moving back up her body, I kissed her passionately as she clawed and raked at my naked back. The pain was agonising and I knew she was ripping my skin as she hung on to me. Parting her thighs again, I lined myself up with her and groaned at the feeling of wetness against the head of my cock.

Unable to wait any longer, I shoved forwards, pushing into her tightness. Instantly, she jerked to a stop, squealed and dug her finger nails into my arms so deeply that I think she made me bleed.

Staring at her, without moving, I gasped and groaned in horror as a tear trickled from the corner of both her eyes.

"What's the matter?" I asked; knowing the answer before she even told me and instantly, my erection disappeared. "Did I hurt you? What the hell is wrong?"

"I was a virgin, Edward!" she replied with a wobbling voice. "Until thirty seconds ago, my maidenhead was intact."

"Oh, my God! Why the hell didn't you tell me! I thought because you came… when I… you know… you, and you didn't… you didn't say? And you're not… shit… I mean… you seem so… so… mature? Why the hell didn't you tell me? FUCK!" I yelled as I looked down and saw a tiny watery coating of blood on my cock.

Staring into her sea green eyes, I looked at her, horrified at what I'd just done to her as she stroked my hot cheek with her cool fingers. "You didn't wait for me, Edward," she whispered. "You've had other… lovers… haven't you?" she asked, her voice cracking.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I've had sex, Bella," I explained, "But I haven't had lovers… and because they offered… and I'm a man…"

"Why didn't you wait for me? Didn't you know I would find you in the end?" she asked.

"I don't understand… find me in the end? I don't understand any of this… What do you mean, I didn't wait for you?" I asked, confused as I felt myself start to harden inside of her once more.

"I waited for you, Edward. For so many years… for so very long… I followed you around the world and you never saw me. You never noticed me. You never called to me. I called to you from every body of water you ever sat by. You ever sat near. You ever threw pebbles into and even painted. Didn't you know it was me who called to you? Didn't you hear my heart pulling you to me? Don't you see my face in every picture you paint? They're me… all me… can't you see that?"

I didn't know what the fuck she was talking about but my traitorous body responded to her clenching muscles and groaning, I thrust forwards again, against my own judgement as my most base of all urges took over.

"Love me, Edward…" she whined as she rolled her pelvis against me. The undulations made me think of the waves in Puglia, and grunting, I wrapped her in my arms, clamped my mouth onto hers and did as she asked.

Ensuring that the pressure on her clitoris was just the right amount, I rejoiced as I felt her tightening around me and she threw her head back as she came once again.

Pulling her so that she was straddling me, I held her hips tightly and jerked up into her repeatedly as she placed my hands on her cool breasts.

"So good… more…" she moaned as I used one hand to tease her and make her cum once again.

It'd never been like this before. My body felt as if it were burning as I battled to hold my release back. The only thing I cared about was her pleasure and happiness but as her muscles clamped around me rhythmically, I couldn't force my cock to wait any longer.

Yelling loudly as every nerve ending in my body focussed on where we were joined, as I came it was so intense that it almost hurt. Arching under her, she pulled my hair so that I semi-sat upright and suckled her nipple as I continued to empty my balls into her damp, willing body.

Collapsing back in a heap, I rolled us so that she was once more lying in my arms, I fought to calm my breathing as her damp hair clung to me in clumps.

"I knew… I knew it would be like this with you… I waited so long… so long. I've been in love with you all my life, Edward… stay with me forever… this is our destiny…" Bella said as she tightened her hold on me.

"Stay with you? Forever?" I asked, feeling slightly overwhelmed and a little nervous by the intensity of her words. "I… I… I don't understand what you mean. How could you have waited for me forever?" I stammered, "I only met you six weeks ago, Bella!"

"You don't remember me do you?" she asked, soundly sad.

"From where? I'd never clapped eyes on you before we met at the gallery. So, no, I don't remember you and I don't understand what this means!"

"I love you, Edward. I love you! I fell in love with you when you were almost three and I was almost four and I touched you for the first time, just as I was taking you home, you left me! Your father pulled you from my fingers! You were made for me! You and I were destined to be together and your parents stopped our destiny," she said, quietly and calmly now.

"How do you know so much about that day?" I gasped, shocked. "Who told you? Have you spoken to Carlisle? What the hell is going on?"

"I was there, Edward… it's me you dream of at night… it's me you see when you paint… I know it is, I've seen your drawings and sketches. It's always my face… always… don't you remember me?" she said and as I stared into her fathomless eyes, it suddenly all made sense. I'd waited for her too.

"Yes… yes…" I whispered as I stroked my fingers through her still wet hair, and felt the crystalline particles of salt beneath my pads. "Yes…"

"Kiss me… take me again…" she whispered and realising that our bodies were still united, I groaned and pressed forwards again.

As we spun and writhed and rolled in ecstasy, her hair wove and wrapped its way around me. Wet tendrils of scarlet and green coiled and slithered over every muscle and fibre of my skin, caressing me and making my body crave more.

"Oh God… Bella…" I moaned as she held me closer and locked her ankles behind my back. Thick ropes of flame red curls immediately tightened around my limbs and held me against her more firmly with every jerking movement we made.

Meeting me thrust for thrust, the feeling of a numbing chill made me open my eyes.

We were in water.

How could that be?

We'd been in the basement of the gallery! We were nowhere near water. The acrid, briny smell that filled my nostrils frightened me and I tried to push her away.

"What the fuck are you doing to me?" I asked, as terror crawled its way up my spine. "BELLA! Why are we in water? Why? We're going to drown! Help me!"

Ignoring me, she yanked and pulled my hair, forcing my head backwards just as a cresting wave washed over us.

"We're destined to be together… you know we are. Don't you? So please don't struggle, my love… it'll cause you pain again and I don't want that… I love you… trust me… trust me…"

Gasping for breath, I fought to free myself as she pulled me lower, and smiling, she shook her head, mouthing the world "No," and tugged harder. My mouth filled with ice cold, salt water and I battled to keep my eyes open as the inky darkness took me with it and her. As she stroked my face, I looked down and her tail glimmered and shone in the dark water as we sank downwards, to my destiny. I no longer struggled. I drifted… smiling…

…

The headlines the next morning, all across Europe espoused the finding of a 'brilliant new artist,' as a new exhibition had been announced for an English artist, showing for the first time in the United States. The same article then went on discuss the strange disappearance of the aforementioned artist, Mr Edward Cullen, who was also a talented art conservator. They said that the disappearance of him and a female colleague was being treated as suspicious after their clothes were found discarded on the banks of the River Thames but no bodies had been discovered.

Further inside the broadsheets of the Daily Telegraph, they also delighted in the repair of the Siren. It looked as good as new, as if the drowning man had once again returned to his corner of the frame…

…..

**There you go! Something a wee bit different to ISS!**

**The Song of the Siren**

**Oh, I am the siren, the siren of the sea,  
The sea, the wondrous sea, that lies forevermore before;  
I stand a fairy shape upon the shadow of a cliff  
Where the water's drowsy ripple laps the phantom of a shore,  
And, oh, so fair, so fair am I, I draw all hearts to me,  
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.**

All the glory of my golden tresses gleams upon the air,  
How it falls about my snowy shoulders, round and bare and white;  
My lips are full of love as rounded grapes are full of wine,  
And my eyes are large and languid, and full of dewy light;  
Oh, I lure the idle landsmen many a league for love of me,  
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.

Sometimes they press so near that my breath is on their cheek,  
And their eager hands can almost touch the glowing bowl I bear,  
They can see the beaded froth, the ruby glitter of the wine,  
Then I slip from their embraces like a breath of summer air;  
Oh, I lightly, lightly glide away, they come no nigher me,  
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.

Sometimes I float along a-standing in a boat,  
Before the ships becalmed, where dusky sailors stand,  
And the helmsman drops his oar, and the lookout leaves his glass,  
So I beckon them, and lure them, with the whiteness of my hand;  
Oh, this the song I sing, well they listen unto me?  
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.

Would you from toil and labour flee,  
Oh float ye out on this wonderful sea,  
From islands of spice the zephyrs blow,  
Swaying the galleys to and fro;  
Silken sails and a balmy breeze  
Shall waft you unto a perfect ease.

Fold your hands and rest, and rest,  
The sun sails on from the east to the west,  
The days will come, and the days will go,  
What good can man for his labour show  
In passionless peace, come float with me  
Over the waves of this wonderful sea.

Would you forget, oh sorrowful soul,  
Come and drink of this golden bowl,  
With jewelled poppies about the rim,  
Drink of the wine that flushes its brim,  
And drown all your haunting memories there,  
Your woe and your weary care.

Oh, I am the siren, the siren of the sea,  
The sea, the wondrous sea, that lies forevermore before;  
Oh, the mystic music ripples, how they break in rosy spray,  
But the crystal wave will mock them, they will reach it  
nevermore,  
For it glides away, I glide away, they come no nigher me,  
For I am the siren, the siren of the sea.

**Marietta Holley**

**She sits alone, the Siren,  
On an isle of clearest glass,  
Immortal with an angel's voice  
No mortal could surpass.  
She calls to passing seaman,  
Enrapturing each soul,  
Imploring him to come to her  
And shed his self-control.  
The beauty of the misting sound  
That leads his path astray  
Is nothing to her sorrow  
Which upon his heart doth prey.**

**Her words are clear from far away,  
Words calling for her lover,**

**Engraving on the seaman's soul**

**That love she can't recover.**

"**Return," she cries upon the breeze,**

"**How barren is my life!**

**Return and take me once again**

**And I shall be your wife.**

**If somehow you can sense my voice,  
Return to me once more-**

**If only you'd return, my love,**

**And touch the crystal shore.**

**He felt her call impel him**

**Though her lover he was not,**

**But by her soft and lilting song,**

**His heart and soul were caught.**

**Each man upon that sailing ship**

**Turned toward the glassy isle**

**A tear rolled down on every cheek,**

**On every lip, a smile,**

**For each man dreamed he'd be the man**

**To drown that mournful cry**

**If love she craved, each love-sick man**

**Would hasten to comply.**

**Yet, still, men thought, who is he,**

**This man not understood:**

**How could her love resist her call**

**As not one other could?**

**And more, why would he wish to,**

**With a love as true as she?**

**They loathed him for her sorrow,**

**For their own strange jealousy.**

**Each man prayed she'd take him instead**

**And still her mournful cry**

**That wrenched and tore through**

**Every heart so not an eye was dry.**

**They beached, at last, upon the shore**

**Of the diamond of the sea,**

**Men driven by that silver voice**

**That sundered painfully,**

**But none had hearts so callous**

**They could counter Siren's call,**

**So, all the sailors left the ship**

**To find her crystal hall.**

**There, upon a crystal throne**

**That glowed with rainbow light,**

**Sat a woman, oh so radiant,**

**She could light a starless night.**

**Her hair was made of sunbeams**

**From the gloried rising sun,**

**Those glowing vibrant colours**

**When the day has just begun.**

**Her skin was white and glowing**

**Life the fullest April moon**

**And, on her cheeks, the hues**

**Of Autumn's splendour softly strewn.**

**Her lips were of the deepest**

**Crimson colour roses grow,**

**And softer than the softest**

**Petals man could ever sow.**

**Her eyes, though, were what touched them,**

**What could melt their every soul**

**Infused with such emotion,**

**Glowing pain and endless woe.**

**Her eyes, the colour of the sea**

**When blown by stormy gale**

**And of a perfect beauty**

**Even Helen could not pale,**

**They looked with azure anguish,**

**Filled with tears as yet to fall,**

**A look inside those tortured depths**

**That matched her lonely call**

**Her melancholy voice was matched**

**With dulcimer of**

**Stephanie Barr**

**To actually find much out about the painting, The Siren, is quite difficult. It's in Sotheby's private collection and is based who knows where. It was painted in 1900 and as of 2003, was valued at over £1 million. This is a story, please remember that!**

**I did fall in love with this painting at the age of five and it has haunted me all my life, and, like Edward, I never got to see it. **

**John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)**, affectionately known as Nino in his younger days, was born in Rome on the 6th of April, 1849. Both of his parents were English painters who moved to Italy in pursuit of art. Waterhouse and his parents eventually moved back to England in the late 1850's. While growing up, Waterhouse assisted his father in art studio where the young Waterhouse developed his talents for sculpting and painting. In England, after several attempts at admission to the Royal Academy, he finally succeeded entrance in 1870. In 1885, Waterhouse became an Associate of the Royal Academy, and then a full member, Royal Academician, in 1895.

Although often classified as a Pre-raphaelite for his style and themes, Waterhouse is truly a Neo-Classic painter. Some of Waterhouse's earlier works were focused on Italian themes and scenery, reflecting his love for his birth place. Later on, his works picked up the styles and classical themes of Pre-raphaelites such as Alma-Tadema and Frederick Leighton. Waterhouse went on to paint well over 200 paintings depicting classical mythogolgy, historical and literary subjects, particularly those of Roman mythology and classic English poets such as Keats and Tennyson. Femme fatale is a common theme in his works, as most are of beautiful elegaic women and of many men are victims.

Waterhouse is one of the rare artists who became popular and relatively well-off financially when he was alive. He continued to paint until his death on the 10th of February, 1917 after a long illness. His style became a major influence on many of the later Pre-raphaelites including Frank Dicksee and Herber James Draper.

Today, many of his works are in private collections or somewhere unknown; however, most of his famous paintings can be found scattered all over England. Among these is "The Lady of Shalott" - 1888, which can be found in London; "Hylas and the Nymphs" - 1896, at Manchester City Art Gallery, and "Echo and Narcissus" - 18xx, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. His other famous works can be found around the world including Germany (La Belle Dame Sans Merci), Scotland (Penelope and the Suitors), and Australia (Circe Invidiosa).


End file.
